Residents Flee Damascus as Battle Enters Its Fifth Day

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Fighting seized neighborhoods encircling Damascus for a fifth straight day on Thursday, a day after President Bashar al-Assad’s key security aides were killed in a brazen bombing attack in the sharply escalating conflict.

The bombing, close to Mr. Assad’s own residence, called into question the ability of a government that depends on an insular group of loyalists to function effectively as it battles a strengthening opposition. In a move to dispel any rumors that he had been injured or had left the capital, Mr. Assad appeared on state television on Thursday swearing in a new defense minister in what appeared to be a reception room at the presidential palace. The images were broadcast in a continuous loop on SANA.

The outlook for a peaceful outcome to the conflict darkened further on Thursday, when Russia and China vetoed a Britain-sponsored resolution at the United Nations Security Council that would have penalized Mr. Assad’s government with sanctions for the first time for failing to implement the six-point peace plan negotiated by Kofi Annan, the special Syria envoy. The double veto also called into question the viability of a 300-member United Nations mission sent to Syria to monitor the peace plan. Its mandate expires Friday.

Opposition activists reported battles between the Army and opposition forces in the southern district of Damascus and in the northern suburb of Qaboun, with residents who were not trapped by fighting fleeing many areas. In a second statement in two days, the Syrian military said on Thursday that the bombing had left it more determined to “clear the homeland of the armed terrorist groups” — the term it uses for the insurgents seeking Mr. Assad’s ouster.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, said that the government assault had intensified, with more helicopters firing rockets that were igniting and destroying houses in Qaboun. It said that snipers were deployed around the exits of the neighborhood and that water and electricity had been cut off with numerous families trapped and no one able to excavate dead bodies from the rubble.

One activist reached in Damascus, using only the name Omar, said that the government had been asking residents of Tadamon and parts of Yarmouk, the capital’s southern neighborhoods, to leave their homes. That is usually a sign that government forces are on the verge of a violent attack.

Residents of Mezze and Kafr Sousseh, western neighborhoods even closer to the center of the city, fled unprompted because of the intensity of the shelling there, activists said.

Another activist, Ali Salem, said residents of some five districts of the southern districts of the capital had been warned to leave and those neighborhoods were largely empty. “They threatened them and gave them 24 hours to leave their homes or they will be shelled,” he said.

At least some of the Assad family has left Damascus. One opposition figure said a person associated with air force intelligence told him that a plane left Mezze military airfield in Damascus on Wednesday afternoon for Latakia carrying Mr. Assad’s mother, Anisa al-Assad, the widow of the former president Hafez al-Assad; his wife, Asma, and their three children, and other women and children from the family.

It is possible the family is gathering for a ceremony at the family mausoleum in Qardaha, above Latakia, to bury Asef Shawkat, the most significant of those who died in the attack on Wednesday.

Mr. Shawkat, the former deputy chief of staff of the military and the husband of the president’s older sister, Bushra, was killed along with Defense Minister Dawoud A. Rajha, the most prominent Christian in the government, and Maj. Gen. Hassan Turkmani, a previous defense minister serving as the top military aide to Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa.

The strike dealt a potent blow to the government, as much for where it took place as for the individuals who were targeted: the very cabinet ministers and intelligence chiefs who have coordinated the government’s iron-fisted approach to the uprising.

The battle for the capital, the center of Assad family power, appears to have begun.

In their statement on Thursday, the armed forces said the authorities would “decisively” eliminate “the criminal and murder gangs and chasing them out of their rotten hide-outs wherever they are until clearing the homeland of their evils,” the official SANA news agency reported.

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A still image from Syrian television showed what it said were security forces involved in clashes in Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday.Credit
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“Syria — people, army and leadership — is today more determined to counter terrorism with all its forms” and would cut “off the hand of whoever thinks to harm Syria’s security,” the statement said, adding that the attacks on Wednesday would increased the authorities’ determination to “clear the homeland of the armed terrorist groups,” the government’s usual term for its opponents.

The escalating attack drew dire assessments elsewhere.

“It pains me to say, but we are not on the track for peace in Syria,” Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the Norwegian head of the United Nations monitoring mission in Syria told reporters in Damascus on Thursday, a day before the group’s mandate expires, “and the escalations we have witnessed in Damascus over the past few days is a testimony to that.”

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“For the sake of the Syrian people, we need effective leadership from the Security Council and genuine unity around a political plan that meets the aspirations of the Syrian people and that is accepted by the parties. Government and opposition must be willing to make the necessary concessions and sit at the negotiating table,” he said.

During a visit to Kabul, Afghanistan, on Thursday, the British prime minister, David Cameron, called for Mr. Assad’s ouster and for the support of Russia — Syria’s main international sponsor — in imposing “tough” sanctions, a step Moscow has strongly resisted.

“It is time for him to go, it is time for transition in this regime,” Mr. Cameron said. “Clearly, Britain doesn’t support violence on either side, but if there isn’t transition there is going to be civil war,” he said.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said on Wednesday that Syria “is rapidly spinning out of control,” and warned Mr. Assad’s government to safeguard its large stockpile of chemical weapons. “It’s obvious what is happening in Syria is a real escalation,” he said at a joint news conference with the British defense minister, Philip Hammond.

In Syria, the impact of Wednesday’s events reverberated on multiple levels, piercing the psychological advantage that Mr. Assad’s superior military strength has provided in preserving the loyalty of his forces and frightening much of the public into staying home. With the opposition energized and the government demoralized, analysts wondered if other military units and trusted lieutenants would be more inclined to switch sides — and if the government would retaliate with an escalation of violence.

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A child was treated last week after a bombing in Qusayr, Syria.Credit
Giulio Piscitelli

The idea that a poorly organized, lightly armed opposition force could somehow get so close to the seat of power raised questions about the viability of a once unassailable police state. The Assad family has for decades relied on overlapping security forces and secret police to preserve its lock on power. At best, for Mr. Assad, the system failed. At worst, for Mr. Assad, defectors or turncoats helped carry out an inside operation.

The government said that the attack was the work of a suicide bomber, while an officer with the Free Syrian Army said it was a remotely detonated explosive.

State television also said the minister of the interior, Lt. Gen. Mohamed al-Sha’ar, had been gravely wounded but was in stable condition. Hisham Ikhtiar, the head of general security, was reported by some activist organizations among those in critical condition, along with some junior officers, but the official news media did not confirm that.

The bombing took place in a small, nondescript building in a neighborhood that is home to the country’s elite. The government quickly appointed a new defense minister, Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij, the military chief of staff who had previously been responsible for trying to quash the uprising in northern Idlib Province. He appeared briefly on television, vowing that the military would not be deterred by the attack from “cutting off every hand that harms the security of the homeland and citizens.”

Activists reported an even harsher crackdown, with government soldiers firing indiscriminately in several embattled neighborhoods or from helicopters, especially on the southern part of Damascus where fighting first erupted Sunday. Dozens of people were killed, and defections soared, activists said.

Like any event in Damascus, details surrounding the attack were murky. There were competing accounts of how the attack occurred and competing claims of responsibility. The Free Syrian Army based in Turkey said it had helped carry out the attack. Also, a brigade from a group with a seemingly religious bent called the Islamic Battalions said it was responsible.

The attack heightened the perception globally that after months of clashes, Syria was embroiled in a civil war.

On the other end of the scale, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, delivered an emotional speech live on television, saying that the Syria of Mr. Assad and Mr. Shawkat was the backbone of the Arab confrontation with Israel.

Reporting was contributed by Dalal Mawad and Hwaida Saad from Beirut; Alan Cowell from London; Matthew Rosenberg from Kabul, Afghanistan; Rick Gladstone from New York; Ellen Barry from Moscow; Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem; Elisabeth Bumiller and Eric Schmitt from Washington; and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.